Another day, another wonderful post from David St. Lawrence, over at Ripples. His series of posts chronicling his experiences in transforming from a writer into a self-publisher is must-read stuff for anyone involved in, or considering, writing a book. So here's a link to his archive page where the whole Self-Publishing series - 12 posts at last count - is collected (remember, it's a blog, so you may want to scroll down and start at the beginning, including the comments).
A comment I posted early in the series on the topic of justified margins has nagged at me and leads me to re-post it here, so I can offer graphics to illustrate my point. And that point is ... (drum roll) ... DON'T.
Don't use justified margins, I mean.
Here's what I wrote over at Ripples, broken up here with images from the books I used as examples:
I came across the comment from Michael Cleverly and your response about using "justified" text.
If it's not too late, I'd like to urge you to reconsider. Studies have shown that blocks of justified text are actually harder to read, because they result in odd spacing between words and excessive hyphenation by wordprocessing and page layout programs. The frequent wider spaces often line up from one line to another, producing distracting visual "rivers" of empty spaces winding down the page. It takes a lot of careful, manual adjustments of kerning and tracking to avoid these problems.
Take a look at some of the most beautiful, well-designed books produced in the last couple of decades:
Edward Tufte's series of books on information design (especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd ed. and Visual Explanations):
and Douglas Holleley's wonderful resource for self-publishing, Digital Book Design and Publishing.
All printed with left-justification, ragged-right.
All self-published, as well, by the way.
In an article with roots in my past life as an appellate lawyer, Painting With Print, Prof. Ruth Ann Robbins urges lawyers to avoid justified text under the sub-heading: "There isn't much justification for justified text."
Her article has been adopted and posted on the official website of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, available at http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/Rules/Painting_with_Print.pdf. Check it out. She offers lots of useful typographic advice and research to back it up.
Not surprisingly, her article was printed in a scholarly journal ... left justified, ragged-right. The editors found it necessary to add a note, assuring their readers that Robbins' attack on tradition was her own fault, "rather than adhering to the page design and heading conventions of J.ALWD."
So there are opinions on both sides. I'll go with Robbins, and Tufte, and Holleley. But I won't hold your choice against you.
Since it's my soapbox, here are a couple more examples (note: these are information designers writing about how to get your message across):
Dynamics in Document Design, by Karen Schriver (Wiley 1997)
Information Design Desk Reference, by Christine Sevilla (Crisp 2002)
Now that you've seen my "evidence," what do you think?
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